Octavius
7. M. Octavius, described by Cicero as Cn. f., must be the younger son of No. 4. In his tribunate of the plebs, the year of which is not stated, he brought forward a law for raising the price at which corn was sold to the people by the Frumentaria lex of C. Gracchus, since it was found that the treasury was quite drained by the law of Gracchus. Cicero attributes the enactment of the law to the influence and eloquence of Octavius, although he adds that he was, properly speaking, not an orator. (Cic. de Off. 2.21, Brut. 62.) This M. Octavius should be carefully distinguished from the M. Octavius who was the colleague of Tib. Gracchus. [See No. 5.]
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.